NASA's TESS captures 3I/ATLAS once again. But some data is missing. Here's what happened

NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has captured a series of images of 3I/ATLAS between January 15 and 22, 2026, as it moved away from the Sun. It created a 28-hour-long video in which the comet appears as a bright glowing dot with an anti-tail directed towards the Sun. 3I/ATLAS is on its way out of the solar system, and scientists are still observing it. TESS has a wide field of view and scans the sky for a month at a time. This is not the first time that the NASA telescope has captured 3I/ATLAS. While the comet was officially discovered on July 1, precovery data recovered from TESS showed that the telescope had recorded it as early as May 2025. At the time, scientists tried to look for an extended coma, but did not find a clear indicator. While scanning data on other telescopes, TESS revealed that it had recorded 3I/Atlas over 20 days between May 7 and June 1. In the recent images, TESS faced a technical issue between January 15 and 18, so data is interrupted for that period of time.

Also Read: 3I/ATLAS was spotted by NASA's TESS long before Atlas telescope. It saw no coma. Why?

Hubble captured 3I/ATLAS during Earth-Sun axis alignment

TESS entered a safe mode because of a problem with its solar panels. TESS team member, Daniel Muthukrishna from MIT put together the available images into a 28-hour video, with a time jump from January 15 to 18, 2026. 3I/ATLAS continues to intrigue scientists even as it makes its way out of the solar system. The Hubble Space Telescope observed it between November 30, 2025 and January 22, 2026, when it was aligned with the Earth-Sun axis. It came within a small angle of 0.69 degrees from the axis, offering a unique opportunity to measure an effect called "the opposition surge", where dust reflects sunlight more brightly. Scientists used this time to study the composition of the comet.

Also Read: 3I/ATLAS could be coming from a star that is already dead: ‘A star that’s so ancient...’

3I/ATLAS and Jupiter

3I/ATLAS will enter another crucial moment when it comes eerily close to Jupiter's Hill Radius in March. On March 16, 2026, NASA's Juno spacecraft will be able to observe it from a distance of 53.6 million kilometres. This is the area around Jupiter inside which the planet's gravity dominates that of the Sun's. Some scientists, such as Avi Loeb, believe this is too big a coincidence and we need to watch what 3I/ATLAS does in this region. He had earlier discovered several anomalies in the object, claiming that it could even be an alien spacecraft coming to probe the solar system.